Neo4all CD

[RMD]

I've noticed that neogeo for all has a huge issue loading orginal neogeo cd games. It seems to only be able to load copies of most newer neogeo cd games instead of orginals. KOF 99, SS3 and more didnt load when I put orginals in. However copies of them worked fine.

[Christuserloeser]

NeoGeoCDs do have a copy protection that the Dreamcast (and NeoGeoZ) can't read.

I assume it's limited to US games. Also you theory about the age of a release can't be confirmed: I got older originals (such as Sengoku 2 and KOF'94) that don't work, while newer ones like Pulstar do.

[DaMadFiddler]

Quzar was playing with the NeoGeo copy protection a while back, but I don't know (more likely: don't recall) what, if anything, he'd learned about it.

To my knowledge, the only consoles that use unprotected discs are SegaCD, PC-Engine/TG-16, and CD-i.

[Sweater Fish]

To my knowledge, the only consoles that use unprotected discs are SegaCD, PC-Engine/TG-16, and CD-i.

The 3DO also has no copy protection, either on discs or in the system. In fact, though, neither does the Neo Geo CD. Neo Geo CD games copy directly and backups will play with no problem on a real Neo Geo CD system. I guess the actual problem with playing original discs in the emluators here is probably similar to the problem that keeps original Turbo CD games from working even though they don't have any copy protection either. I never understood what that problem was exactly, but it's something with the file system or some junk, from what I gather.


...word is bondage...

[DaMadFiddler]

Something about having a redundant storage architecture....

[RMD]

So the only way to play my neogeo cd games is to make a copy of all of them first?

[Quzar]

To my knowledge, the only consoles that use unprotected discs are SegaCD, PC-Engine/TG-16, and CD-i.

The 3DO also has no copy protection, either on discs or in the system. In fact, though, neither does the Neo Geo CD. Neo Geo CD games copy directly and backups will play with no problem on a real Neo Geo CD system. I guess the actual problem with playing original discs in the emluators here is probably similar to the problem that keeps original Turbo CD games from working even though they don't have any copy protection either. I never understood what that problem was exactly, but it's something with the file system or some junk, from what I gather.


...word is bondage...

You are misinformed. NeoGeo CD games store a small amount of copy protection data in the subchannel areas (at the time, pretty much no consumer drive could rip that). The original Neo Geo CD hardware though did not ever look for this protection, so standard 2048/2352 (iso/wav, whathaveyou) copies can run on it. Try running some of those games on the NeoGeo CDZ, which had an updated bios though, and you'll see that many simply won't run (or will have crazy errors).

The problem with the reading of original NGCD discs on the dreamcast is that the emulator (NeoCD) was designed to read the disc as iso9660 compliant files and whatnot (which for the most part it is, enough so that in ripping you can get plainfiles). When reading a real CD though, the Dreamcast has problems seeing files on it.

The only time I got a real game to show any files, was pretty much pure chance and it was that I used multiple ways to open the CD and checked again and again until I got it to read (had it loop in different methods shutting down and spinning up again and whatnot) and got it to give me the file list properly, but subsequently couldn't read any more =P.

I don't know what you're referring to that keeps original TG-16 discs from reading in emulators. If you're talking about the Dreamcast emulators, the only reason straight disc reading hasn't been implemented is that the ability doesn't exist natively in KOS. I've hacked together a driver that adds that functionality, and the ability to read individual sectors regardless of disc mode, but it's still buggy and returns incorrect data quite often (the fact that HuGo!'s source code is ridiculously ugly doesn't help =\).

[Sweater Fish]

You are misinformed. NeoGeo CD games store a small amount of copy protection data in the subchannel areas (at the time, pretty much no consumer drive could rip that). The original Neo Geo CD hardware though did not ever look for this protection, so standard 2048/2352 (iso/wav, whathaveyou) copies can run on it. Try running some of those games on the NeoGeo CDZ, which had an updated bios though, and you'll see that many simply won't run (or will have crazy errors).

I wonder why SNK didn't put the copy detection into the systems if they had the forethought to put protection on the discs? Were they actually counting on piracy to help the system sell?

Would the disc reading code from DreamHakker be more effective? DreamHakker seems to be capable of seeing the files on original Neo Geo CD or Turbo CD discs, though for doing more than just displaying the filenames and sizes it may have the same errors you get in the driver you wrote.


...word is bondage...


...word is bondage...

[emptythought]

DreamHakker seems to be capable of seeing the files on original Neo Geo CD or Turbo CD discs, though for doing more than just displaying the filenames and sizes it may have the same errors you get in the driver you wrote.

If DemoMenu can see the files on original Neo Geo CDs the source to DemoMenu was stored away until a few months ago:

http://consolevision.com/?Dreamcast:Boo ... s:DemoMenu

The code to DCHakker (or whatever you want to call it) is probably stored somewhere but it hasn't been found yet.

[Quzar]

You are misinformed. NeoGeo CD games store a small amount of copy protection data in the subchannel areas (at the time, pretty much no consumer drive could rip that). The original Neo Geo CD hardware though did not ever look for this protection, so standard 2048/2352 (iso/wav, whathaveyou) copies can run on it. Try running some of those games on the NeoGeo CDZ, which had an updated bios though, and you'll see that many simply won't run (or will have crazy errors).

I wonder why SNK didn't put the copy detection into the systems if they had the forethought to put protection on the discs? Were they actually counting on piracy to help the system sell?

Would the disc reading code from DreamHakker be more effective? DreamHakker seems to be capable of seeing the files on original Neo Geo CD or Turbo CD discs, though for doing more than just displaying the filenames and sizes it may have the same errors you get in the driver you wrote.


...word is bondage...


...word is bondage...

It seems to have played out something like this. Games before they came up with the cdz had no protection. At some point they came up with the protection spec, which they knew would not interfere with play on the CD and implemented it, then when the cdz came out they could not be copied.

So basically early games have no protection, but a significant portion of them do. Also, it's quite possible for any game to have it's own protection aside from the system (and it would be easy too, just check that some audio data sector = what it should, if the audio had been downsampled or moved in any way as backups almost always do, it would not play).

[RMD]

Well why cant you just use a reserver to the CDZ patcher. The cdz patcher lets you patch isos to work on cdz so why couldnt the emulator just use that to read each game as being pre patched?

[Quzar]

Well why cant you just use a reserver to the CDZ patcher. The cdz patcher lets you patch isos to work on cdz so why couldnt the emulator just use that to read each game as being pre patched?

I guess I wasn't clear before, but to my knowledge the problem with reading original discs doesn't have anything to do with their protection, it's because they aren't (afaik) 100% standard discs (otherwise the DC should have no problem reading from them).

Also, without source code, I can't really implement something like that, and it's (afaik) not open source.

[Christuserloeser]

I like the idea of the CDZ Patcher.

I am currently looking for the list of TOC / CRC32 info that Squaresoft74 of NECstasy.net put up here. I know I've downloaded it and it must be somewhere on my HDD.

[Christuserloeser]

Well, I found something...

[Salamander2]

my KOF 97 still not works. only a backup of it.

[kingbuzzo]

Both Real Bout Fatal Fury Special, Fatal Fury, and Last Blade 2 originals will not work in either neodc or neo4all

but they do work in the japanese neocdz emu perfectly, which I now cannot seem to locate.